her lips. Her black beaded bag lay atop the table and her black-and-white striped parasol was propped against the wall beside her.
A small electric fan atop the refrigerator stirred the reeking scent of marijuana and the fragrant aroma of sassafras tea.
She regarded Uncle Saint curiously over the rim of the cup.
“Well, you’re finally back,” she said.
Uncle Saint coughed. “You see me,” he grunted.
Pinky sat across the table from Sister Heavenly, his torso looming so high above her he looked like a barrel- chested midget standing in the chair. He looked from one to the other.
“Did you see Gus?” he asked Uncle Saint in his whining voice.
“I said I would tell you in a minute,” Sister Heavenly snapped at him.
Uncle Saint couldn’t make out her game, so he decided to keep his mouth shut. He sat on his bunk, placed the loaded shotgun close beside him, and reached underneath and dragged out a rusty iron lockbox in which he kept everything he owned. From his side pants pocket he took a single key attached to a long brass chain hanging from his belt and unlocked the tremendous Yale padlock which secured his box.
Two pairs of eyes followed his every movement, but he studiedly ignored them. He had his own alcohol lamp, teaspoon and spike, and he would use no other.
Silently they watched him mix a deck of heroin and a deck of cocaine, light the lamp and cook it in a spoon, load the spike. He banged himself in a vein just above his left wrist. His brown decayed teeth bared like an animal’s when the spike went in, but his mouth went loose and sloppy in a soft sighing sound as he drew out the spike.
Sister Heavenly finished her cup of tea and waited a few minutes for his speedball to work, slowly swallowing the sweet marijuana smoke.
“What happened to the trunk?” she asked finally.
Uncle Saint looked around as though expecting to find it in the kitchen. He hadn’t made up any kind of a story and all his furtive looks at her didn’t tell him anything. Outwardly she looked indifferent and serene, but he knew from past experience that didn’t mean a thing. Finally he decided to lie to the bitter end. He had lost the mother- raping trunk and had blown some mother-raper’s brains out to boot, and wasn’t nothing going to change that. He was too mother-raping old to worry about every little thing that came along.
He licked his dry lips and muttered, “We been barking up the wrong tree. There wasn’t nothing in that trunk. Them expressmen come and got it and took it straight to the docks and left it there. I followed them, but when I seen there wasn’t nothing in it I figured there had been a switch, so I turned around and highballed it back uptown looking for you, but you has gone. So I figures you has already got it — if there was anything to get.”
“That’s what I thought,” she said enigmatically. “We been on a wild-goose chase.”
Pinky’s battered face contorted in a fit of rage. “You was after Gus’s treasure map,” he accused. “That’s why you give me that knockout shot. You was trying to steal Gus’s treasure map and you done let him get kilt.”
“He ain’t no more dead than you is,” Sister Heavenly said calmly. “I saw him talking to the expressmen when-”
“You saw Gus alive!” Pinky exclaimed. His eyes bugged out in an expression of horror.
Sister Heavenly went on as though she hadn’t noticed. “Not only saw him but I felt him. He talked to the expressmen when they came for the trunk and gave them the treasure map to mail.”
Pinky stared at her in disbelief. “You saw Gus give the expressmen the treasure map?” he echoed stupidly.
“What are you so het up about?” she asked sharply. “Ain’t you the one who said he was going to give them the treasure map to mail to him in Ghana?”
“But I thought he was already kilt by now,” Pinky stammered in confusion.
Uncle Saint was staring from one to another with a fixed expression of imbecility. He wondered if he was hearing right.
“He might be killed by now but he was alive when I was there,” she said. “And Ginny and the African was getting the bags ready to leave. Ginny was straightening up for the new couple what comes in today.”
Pinky looked flabbergasted. He opened his mouth to say something but was stopped by the sound of an automobile horn from the street in front.
“That’s Angelo,” she said casually, and looked sharply from one to the other to see their reactions.
Both looked suddenly guilty and trapped.
She smiled cynically. “Sit still,” she said. “I’ll go out and see what he wants this early in the morning.”
“But it ain’t his day,” Pinky whined.
Uncle Saint threw him a black look.
But Sister Heavenly merely said, “It sure ain’t,” as she got to her feet.
The front door was never opened, so she went out the back door and circled the house by the path. Her long skirt caught in the high dry weeds and burs clung to the hem but she paid it no attention.
A thickset, swarthy, black-haired man wearing a navy blue straw hat with a fluted gray silk band, Polaroid sunglasses in a heavy black frame, a charcoal-gray suit of shantung silk, white silk shirt and knitted maroon tie, sat behind the wheel of a shiny black MGA sports car with white-wall tires. He was a precinct detective sergeant.
Rows of even white teeth showed in his heavily tanned face at sight of her.
“How’s tricks, Sister H?” he greeted in a jovial voice.
She rested her black-gloved hands on the door of the car and looked at him questioningly. “Same as usual.” In the bright sunshine, her black straw hat atop the gray wig glittered like a cockroach.
“Are you sure?” His voice was insinuating.
“Now what do you mean by that?”
“I just came from the station,” he said. “As soon as I got the reader I came straight to see you. It’s the least I could do for an old friend.”
She looked at the dark green lens of his sunglasses, trying to see his eyes, but she only saw her own reflection. She felt trouble coming on and looked across the street to see if they were being watched.
The villa opposite was the only other house in the block. It was occupied by a large Italian family, but they were so accustomed to seeing the sergeant’s flashy car parked in front of Sister Heavenly’s, and to all the other strange goings-on in that house, they paid it no attention. At the moment none of the brood was in sight.
“Let’s finish with the bullshit,” Sister Heavenly said.
“Finished,” he agreed. “There was a shotgun killing took place down near the French Line dock at about half past six this morning,” he went on, watching her expression sharply from behind his trick glasses, but her expression didn’t change.
“It seems that a man standing on the sidewalk was shotgunned to death by a man sitting in a parked car. They found a derringer with a silencer attached on the sidewalk near the victim. It had recently been fired. Homicide figures the man with the derringer tried to gun the man in the car and got himself shotgunned instead. This sort of rod is a professional’s tool. Anyway, the killer got away,” he added offhandedly, waiting for her reaction.
She didn’t show any reaction. All she said was, “What’s that mean to me?”
He shrugged. “Nobody can get any sense out of it. You see, there’re a lot of conflicting descriptions of both the car and the killer. All they could get for certain about the car is that it was a black low-slung limousine, but no one knew the make. But there was one guy who described the killer as a little dried-up darky with gray kinky hair who was wearing a chauffeur’s uniform; and he can’t be shaken.”
“Well, now ain’t that lovely!” Sister Heavenly exclaimed in disgust.
“You ain’t just saying it,” Angelo agreed. “Don’t make any sense at all. But one thing is for sure. The car is marked. It seems the victim had a friend in a car parked behind the killer’s. When this friend saw his buddy shot down he opened up with an automatic and put some holes in the back of the killer’s car. That’s the lead homicide is following.”
She chewed over that for a time. “How about this second gunman?” she asked. “Did he get away too?”
“Nope. That’s where the killer got lucky. While this second party was following the killer’s car he drove in front of a truck and was run over and killed too.”
A veil dropped over Sister Heavenly’s old blue-rimmed ocher eyes as her mind worked furiously. “Did anybody make them?” she asked.
